Get ready to defend this....Obama’s Budget Proposes Up to $750 Billion More Bank-Rescue Aid

[Joanne98]

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s first budget request would provide as much as $750 billion in new aid to the financial industry, as well as overhaul the U.S. health-care system and launch a program to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

The spending blueprint, being sent to Congress today, anticipates the government will run a deficit totaling $1.75 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30, equivalent to about 12 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Obama has promised to cut the shortfall -- the biggest since World War II -- in half by the end of his first term.

A senior administration official, in a briefing yesterday with reporters, declined to say how large the White House believes next year’s deficit will be or provide the total budget figure.

The administration proposes to finance the budget in part by limiting tax deductions for couples earning more than $250,000 a year, raising taxes on hedge-fund managers, cutting defense spending and paring subsidies to insurance companies participating in the government’s Medicare health-care system.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aY8vuevw1NKs&refer=home

We've known all along it would take about a trillion dollars to fix the health system. The Republicans are going to jump on this. we need it DONE!

[stray cat]

1. It sounds like Obama thinks banks going under is worse than the cure

I would like to see nothing given and let things fall where they will - of course I know next to nothing about what would happen if we did that.

[ixion]

2. I'm sorry, but I find defending this position untenable

the finance industry, which caused this mess, which still paid bonuses and threw parties and lavish off-sites, has shown that they really don't deserve any bailing out.

But even if they were deserving, we simply don't have the money and need to stop spending/printing/borrowing ourselves into oblivion. All these so-called bailouts do is exacerbate the long-term problem: increased debt load.